RE: [cliospsyche] In case anyone missed this

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Dr Judith Logue

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Jul 5, 2020, 2:52:22 PM7/5/20
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My White friend, a conservative hard-working, responsible, reliable Christian Republican who supports President Trump, is married and has several adult children, and grandchildren.  She has conscientious sons who work and support a family.  She also has a daughter who is White and receives government support for five children – and who will not listen to her mother who disapproves (understatement). 

 

When I was a social caseworker (age 22) for Southern NJ County Welfare Services agency I did interviews for the Aid to Dependent Children program in 1964.    I traveled to interview both Black and White families.  I found that the racist attitudes in my town – which were clear to me since early childhood --  were not accurate and did not at all fit my experiences and relationships with the Black women I was privileged to interview.   

 

When I left to go to graduate school for my MSW, this decision was considered “pink-o” by a number of my contemporaries.  For anyone too young to remember, that meant I was going toward Communism and socialism.  From then until I moved from liberal Princeton, NJ to rural Florida, I was happy to not encounter these ideas and attitudes.   My colleagues, friends and family promoted and still promote and fight for racial and gender equality.

 

Unfortunately, since 2016, racist attitudes are on the surface  where I am in Florida.  It is beyond anything I anticipated.  I feel as if I’m in a very bad movie – which would be fine if it were only a movie and not reality.

 

As Arnie posted before, truth and reconciliation are required.  I also think that to  write and communicate on listservs to promote understanding, rather than contention and division, may require writing skills not all of us possess.  Were we to have the luxury of an open-ended dialogue or discussion, I bet we’d reach more understanding, even if we had to agree to disagree on some issues.

 

I  pray we are able to get past the partisan divisions which seem to be everywhere, not just in Congress and the White House.  Hopefully in my lifetime.

 

I appreciate Carol’s clear and painful description.  I wish she were wrong about the consequences.  Whether they were intended or unintended racism,  we now must do something about them.  We can do this much better when we are united.

 

Stay healthy, safe, with as much peace as possible,

 

Judy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Judith Logue, Ph.D.

18604 Tranquility Base Lane

Port St. Lucie, Florida 34987

 

609-915-9155, cell

www.judithlogue.com

www.goldilox.net

www.shAIRing.com

 

From: clios...@googlegroups.com <clios...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Carol jaxson-jager
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2020 1:48 PM
To: clios...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Fwd: [APsaA OPLN] : In case anyone missed this

 

Harry,

 

The IPA members who post to this site, are adults who do not all think alike, nor are they required to do so.  If someone posts an opinion you do not like, it should not mean that they can no longer post on this site.

 

Your "untruth" about LBJ can be your opinion, while in truth, welfare and ADC (Aid to Dependent Children) checks were sent to primarily Black women only if she was not married.  Social workers would visit the home each month, and if a man was found to be living there, the checks were withdrawn by the government.  Ultimately, the more babies she had, out of wedlock, the more money she would be given by the government. Some feel that the government made whores out of Black women, as they were paid to have illegitimate babies, who ultimately grew up in a one parent home, which is not advocated in White society.  The more babies, the more money.  Bill Clinton, president in the 1990s, drastically reduced the baby production to only 5 babies per woman.  Today we still have the government dollar at work, as primarily Black women will produce exactly 5, and only 5  children, to receive money to support her family, as she has no husband, and no income, and is not allowed to work, because she has children, and.........

 

The breakdown of  Black family structure is a truth produced by government leaders, that reduces Black citizens nearly always to the poverty level, which is the preferred status assigned to Blacks in America.  The Black living standard today, and yesterday, is the result of systematic, undemocratic  and inhumane tactics to keep them controlled, and limited, so that Whites can succeed.  Are Whites really successful if they must diminish others to get what they want?

 

Dr. Childress, please continue to post, as there are a variety of opinions, and don't turn away from the ones with which you don't agree, but stand up for the ones that are meaningful to you.

 

This post has not heard the last from me,

 

Carol Jaxson-Jager Ed D Ed Sp NCC LPC CST CCTP

 

 

 

On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 11:31 AM 'ARNOLD RICHARDS' via Clio’s Psyche <clios...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Henry J. Friedman via connect.APSA" <Ma...@ConnectedCommunity.org>
Date: July 5, 2020 at 9:16:36 AM EDT
To: arn...@aol.com
Subject: RE:  [APsaA OPLN] : In case anyone missed this
Reply-To: fried...@aol.com



Yesterday, the Fourth of July, began for me with Beverly Stoute's inspiring personal story about listening to and/or reciting Frederik Douglas's...

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Re: In case anyone missed this

Henry J. Friedman

Jul 5, 2020 9:15 AM

Henry J. Friedman

Yesterday, the Fourth of July, began for me with Beverly Stoute's inspiring personal story about listening to and/or reciting Frederik Douglas's Fourth of July speech challenging the patriotic celebration of a holiday without the acknowledgment of slavery.  Douglas spells out what it means to be a slave in the United States, with the horror involved in being owned, existing as property and having no part of freedom.  We analyst's have been educated by our members who can talk authentically about racism in their lives, Dorothy Holmes has been in the forefront of challenging us as an organization to be aware of just how white we are and to think of why that is, Beverly Stoute has made it personal, she has brought her feelings and passion to our attention with great impact, making even the enlightened among us to join her with a passionate response to racism, internal as well as external, Dionne Powell has contributed an incredible JAPA article on racism and Anton Hart has been central to our efforts as an organization to repair the past.  So, there is much to appreciate in what our members can mobilize in those of us who have less reason to think about racism every day of our lives. 

 

And then I read this quote from Barry Childress:

 

n the 60's LBJ's war on poverty fractured the married black families with mothers marrying the Government rather than the actual fathers of their children. Children's education suffered having performed well before LBJ, et.al. saved them. Father's disappeared from home, school lost much of its importance, and drugs and crime increased.

 

 

I was incredulous.  How could any individual post, presented as fact, this version of what Lyndon Johnson actually achieved during his Presidency.  A President who passed the civil rights act and the voting rights act within one year is presented as someone who destroyed the black family with the supposed nightmare that Ronald Reagan introduced into the political sphere.  This is not just an interpretation, it is libel disguised as historical truth.   Nothing is presented that would support such an assertion simply because there is no possibility of truth being involved here.  

 

The author of this scandalous assertion then informs us that the responses to what he posts are so negative that he will stop writing to the members list as if to punish us for our rejection of his ideas.  He becomes a martyr to what he sees as the politically correct among us and in so doing denies the validity of challenging such expressions of free speech because they appear to be racist.  Of course, and to be cautious, I would add that I don't know what is in the author's mind or heart.  For all I know he is a member of the NAACP but the words do count and they are perverse and corrupt, turning history upside down as they do.  

 

What do we allow on our members list?  Are we like Facebook and insist that free speech makes it imperative that we post everything that any member writes.   It has already been decided that tone can be chastised by a committee if they see it as too harsh or damaging to another member.  But what about content, is there no requirement for reality and truth.  Can LBJ really be blamed for a decline in black life in the USA?  This reminds me of the time in the early 2000's when it became clear that Charles Socarides was leading a discussion group on Homosexuality despite the fact that we as an organization had disavowed his pathologizing of homosexuality and homosexuals.  We had gay members and candidates and yet he was continuing to teach his toxic ideas about homosexuality.  A decision was made to attend his discussion group and report back to the Program Committee as to its content.  Socarides died before the investigation could be completed but I would hope that if he were advocating prejudicial ideas about homosexuality that we would have asked him to stop teaching asap.   But, are we going to allow untruths to be promulgated on our lists?  This is not a matter of suppressing different political or psychoanalytic positions, it is merely a plea that attention be paid to racist, homophobic and patriarchal postings when they go over the top.  We may not refuse any member the right to post but we can denounce untruths and harmful assertions in the strongest and direct terms. 

 

Henry J. Friedman

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Original Message:
Sent: 7/4/2020 4:47:00 PM
From: Barry L. Childress
Subject: RE: In case anyone missed this

Learned something today and will get to that as I sign off.

Slavery was legal in both England and France when we established our country under the Declaration's clauses of all being created equal and endowed by our Creator with the rights to life. liberty and pursuit of happiness. These 13 states  all had their own perspectives to protect. Slavery, for and against, was discussed from the times of our Continental Congress and compromise had to be found under these introductory clauses in our Declaration for there to be a Union of these 13 original states ––.

France played off and on with slavery until 1834 and England out lawed it in on the books in 1848 almost 30 years before our Civil War. Most of the current slaves in the world (about 45 million) are now largely in India with runners up in China, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Jules, as when you emailed me back channel yesterday, I agree that Lincoln was not an abolitionist but, rather, was focused on saving our Union while the Democratic secessionists were planning to secede to maintain their right to own slaves to protect their agricultural economy. 

After the secessionists were beaten, Democrats established the KKK and the Jim Crow "separate but equal" Laws. They resisted Republican attempts to integrate the school until the 60'when the Feds stepped in (and school choice is still resisted).

In the 60's LBJ's war on poverty fractured the married black families with mothers marrying the Government rather than the actual fathers of their children. Children's education suffered having performed well before LBJ, et.al. saved them. Father's disappeared from home, school lost much of its importance, and drugs and crime increased.

Now Blacks were back on the Democrat welfare plantation where votes were harvested.

What I learned today from your post is that you don't love America-you discredit American patriotism and favor "humane international globalism" which I could never do.

This may be the basis for my disagreements with some posters here. I am not a proponent of Internationalism nor Socialism. Members of the IPA post here and some may not be citizens of America, "We are all Americans" may not be accurate. Doesn't matter but helps me understand the board better, and I suspect this will be my last political post here.

I wish everyone a happy 4th of July as I'm pretty sure there is one of those in every country.

B

------------------------------
Barry L. Childress M.D.
Austin TX
------------------------------



 

 

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Eddie M. Taylor

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Jul 5, 2020, 3:16:10 PM7/5/20
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Judy,

Thank you for your post and sharing your experiences. 

Eddie


Dr Judith Logue

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Jul 5, 2020, 3:49:24 PM7/5/20
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Thank you, Eddie.
When I re-read my post, there is an unclear and not intended statement.

We should have done something about these consequences long ago - and should have prevented them in the first place.  Not just now.

It is imperative we do everything to stop this.  That is my belief and has been since I was a very young child (with personal and painful up front experience with systemic racism before we had the term).

In sadness, but with fight still left,
Judy


On Jul 5, 2020, at 3:16 PM, 'Eddie M. Taylor' via Clio’s Psyche <clios...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



h.we...@sbcglobal.net

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Jul 5, 2020, 4:08:39 PM7/5/20
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My latest poems.

 

Herb Weiner

Image removed by sender. Henry J. Friedman

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dlo...@nycap.rr.com

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Jul 7, 2020, 12:31:30 AM7/7/20
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                The two posts below are textbook examples of racism. While it is certainly true that AFDC payments to single parent households which increased the more children there were was an incentive for unwed mothers to have more children – this applied equally to non-black single mom families. As there are a lot more poor non-blacks than poor blacks in this country the largest amount of taxpayer money went to non-blacks. Did this policy not have the same destructive effect on family lives for people who aren’t black as is claimed in the posts below?

 

                                                                                David

 

 

 


To: clios...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Fwd: [APsaA OPLN] : In case anyone missed this

 

Harry,

 

The IPA members who post to this site, are adults who do not all think alike, nor are they required to do so.  If someone posts an opinion you do not like, it should not mean that they can no longer post on this site.

 

Your "untruth" about LBJ can be your opinion, while in truth, welfare and ADC (Aid to Dependent Children) checks were sent to primarily Black women only if she was not married.  Social workers would visit the home each month, and if a man was found to be living there, the checks were withdrawn by the government.  Ultimately, the more babies she had, out of wedlock, the more money she would be given by the government. Some feel that the government made whores out of Black women, as they were paid to have illegitimate babies, who ultimately grew up in a one parent home, which is not advocated in White society.  The more babies, the more money.  Bill Clinton, president in the 1990s, drastically reduced the baby production to only 5 babies per woman.  Today we still have the government dollar at work, as primarily Black women will produce exactly 5, and only 5  children, to receive money to support her family, as she has no husband, and no income, and is not allowed to work, because she has children, and.........

 

The breakdown of  Black family structure is a truth produced by government leaders, that reduces Black citizens nearly always to the poverty level, which is the preferred status assigned to Blacks in America.  The Black living standard today, and yesterday, is the result of systematic, undemocratic  and inhumane tactics to keep them controlled, and limited, so that Whites can succeed.  Are Whites really successful if they must diminish others to get what they want?

 

Dr. Childress, please continue to post, as there are a variety of opinions, and don't turn away from the ones with which you don't agree, but stand up for the ones that are meaningful to you.

 

This post has not heard the last from me,

 

Carol Jaxson-Jager Ed D Ed Sp NCC LPC CST CCTP

 

-------------------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 7/4/2020 4:47:00 PM
From: Barry L. Childress
Subject: RE: In case anyone missed this

Learned something today and will get to that as I sign off.

Slavery was legal in both England and France when we established our country under the Declaration's clauses of all being created equal and endowed by our Creator with the rights to life. liberty and pursuit of happiness. These 13 states  all had their own perspectives to protect. Slavery, for and against, was discussed from the times of our Continental Congress and compromise had to be found under these introductory clauses in our Declaration for there to be a Union of these 13 original states ––.

France played off and on with slavery until 1834 and England out lawed it in on the books in 1848 almost 30 years before our Civil War. Most of the current slaves in the world (about 45 million) are now largely in India with runners up in China, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Jules, as when you emailed me back channel yesterday, I agree that Lincoln was not an abolitionist but, rather, was focused on saving our Union while the Democratic secessionists were planning to secede to maintain their right to own slaves to protect their agricultural economy. 

After the secessionists were beaten, Democrats established the KKK and the Jim Crow "separate but equal" Laws. They resisted Republican attempts to integrate the school until the 60'when the Feds stepped in (and school choice is still resisted).

In the 60's LBJ's war on poverty fractured the married black families with mothers marrying the Government rather than the actual fathers of their children. Children's education suffered having performed well before LBJ, et.al. saved them. Father's disappeared from home, school lost much of its importance, and drugs and crime increased.

Now Blacks were back on the Democrat welfare plantation where votes were harvested.

What I learned today from your post is that you don't love America-you discredit American patriotism and favor "humane international globalism" which I could never do.

This may be the basis for my disagreements with some posters here. I am not a proponent of Internationalism nor Socialism. Members of the IPA post here and some may not be citizens of America, "We are all Americans" may not be accurate. Doesn't matter but helps me understand the board better, and I suspect this will be my last political post here.

I wish everyone a happy 4th of July as I'm pretty sure there is one of those in every country.

B

------------------------------
Barry L. Childress M.D.
Austin TX
------------------------------

 

 

 

 

.

ARNOLD RICHARDS

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Jul 7, 2020, 3:07:29 AM7/7/20
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They are 

Arnie 

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 7, 2020, at 12:31 AM, dlo...@nycap.rr.com wrote:


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Alice Maher

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Jul 7, 2020, 5:11:11 AM7/7/20
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David, you, Carol (who I believe is black) and Barry are enriching my understanding and getting me thinking about the problem in new and complex ways. I do wish you had not introduced your post with "classic examples of racism." That feels like the introduction to a personal criticism rather than another, deeper association to a period in history that hadn't entered my consciousness before. Together these associations that cross political divides have the potential to lead to new insights. I'm with Carol - keep talking even if what you hear en route may offend you. If we can't tolerate that kind of "otherness," we'll talk about the weather, preach to our own choirs or attack each other, with not much in between. I don't blame Paul for not wanting that on his list.

Please consider joining our Dialogue With Dignity project. The first meeting is August 2 with 2 weeks of dialogue with the audience in between. Hopefully, the structure and the buy-in from participants will enable us to go to new places. There's a huge psychodynamic space between fight and flight.


Alice


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Brian D'Agostino

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Jul 7, 2020, 9:50:11 AM7/7/20
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The issue that Alice is raising has to do with taboos, power, and how language works in the context of social interaction.  Huge topics.  When is language being used to oppress and when is it being used to liberate?  Taboos are society's way of shutting down certain communications.  Are there situations in which taboos are liberating?  For example, is it good that it is no longer socially acceptable in the US to call some people "niggers" or is that a bad thing ("political correctness") that stifles other people's authentic expression of what they really think and feel?  Maybe it depends on whether you are a Black person who no longer fears being insulted and marginalized in this way or a White person who feels society is curtailing his freedom of expression.  When does labeling something "racist" advance our consciousness and when is it a way of shutting down communication?  And under what conditions, if any, is it GOOD to shut down certain communications?  If you want to see what happens when we dispense with all taboos, join Alice's experiment.  If you want to reflect on this issue using the tools of anthropology, psychoanalysis and more, have THAT discussion here.  These are not mutually exclusive alternatives.

Patrick McEvoy-Halston

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Jul 7, 2020, 10:12:02 AM7/7/20
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There comes periods of time where engaging with others, really just means finding some area of agreement so you can legitimate hate upon radicals who take things, quote unquote, over the top, as some people felt when #metoo started taking on serial abusers WE LIKE, like Al Franken. We dumped psychoanalysis 40 years ago because at some level we could no longer give legitimacy to a science, to an art, that would confront us with the horrible means by which we were going to ensure our daily equilbrium, and ensure some kind of growth continued, even after a more ideal and shared growth that was the 60s and 70s could no longer be shared for it feeling increasingly sinful/narcissistic/bad/unadulterated/uncompromised. At this point, we are so close to that point where the majority throws in the towel and agrees to regressive nationalism, focusing all our efforts on restoring "national stature," i.e., the dignity of the mothers' we felt we abandoned in our growth, and punishing bratty children. Liberals momentarily tried to develop empathy for the America that they had deliberately forced to experience their own feelings of childhood abandonment and neediness in the early stages of Trump's presidency; everybody was reading Hillbilly Elegy; but then we realized we still needed some "poison container" we could use to contain aspects of our own selves that we could feel at liberty to, that we could feel an absence of guilt over, hating and punishing. So, the effort for outreach was already tried, and rightly rejected, again, at the very beginning of the Trump presidency, for in making that outreach we realized that our own sanity would lose stability, and true progress would lose its foremost advocates. 

That's my take. It's very easy to make what remains a necessary thing--shutting down speech--seem un-American, evil, for it won't and cannot at this stage of our civilization be golden. It'll have a lot simply about keeping certain people's equilibrium settled; a lot that is often called "selfish," about it. In the 60s and 70s, liberals embraced true free speech, because after so many yrs of war and depression, few were nervous about their own growth, few guilty about it, because it felt earned... blessed by some god. We want that kind of conversation again, where liberals and conservatives can engage without you rightly sensing its about certain liberals' desire to justify their own regression, turning on parts of their own selves, we have to wait a decade or two, after this very precarious period is over. Otherwise we just add fuel to the fire in making liberals seem selfish and ridiculous. 

Brigitte DEMEURE

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Jul 7, 2020, 1:00:32 PM7/7/20
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Hi everybody,

 

Tonight on the French/German TV broadcast ARTE the documentary film (4 episodes) "les routes de l'esclavage" - the history of the slave trade since the 5th Century AD :

 

https://boutique.arte.tv/detail/les_routes_de_l_esclavage 

 

https://www.programme-tv.net/programme/culture-infos/r1549435627-les-routes-de-lesclavage/

 

The DVDs are supposed to have en English translation. A book by Catherine-Vidrovitch (same title) is linked to the documentary. I think it is a "must" for anybody interested in this issue.  There is still so much to be searched and written about slavery. Which is going on by the way, migrant workers forced in debt bondage in global corporations can be found at the present time anywhere in Asia, in the Gulf countries, etc... (in the electronics and building industry, agriculture, etc etc)..

 

Best

Brigitte

 

 

 

 

> Message du 07/07/20 15:50
> De : "Brian D'Agostino" <bdagost...@gmail.com>
> A : clios...@googlegroups.com
> Copie à :
> Objet : [cliospsyche] taboos, power, and language
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cliospsyche/9782ba34-25c8-772c-69c6-cc0bb03682aa%40gmail.com.

Carol jaxson-jager

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Jul 7, 2020, 3:15:54 PM7/7/20
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David,

Yes, you are right about the policy of paying women to have babies out of wedlock.  The process is a destructive one, for low income families under the guise of helping them. Yes, more tax dollars are spent on young white women without husbands, than are spent on young Black women without husbands.

The difference is that Blacks are one third of the American population but over %80 of the imprisoned, are Black males.  Black young boys are targeted, usually beginning around the age of nine.  As young White boys begin to develop around the 4th grade, they are encouraged by the system to succeed.  When young Black boys around the 4th grade begin to develop, they are seen as a growing threat to the American way, and are often discouraged and excluded. Black boys are no more criminal than anyone else, but are treated as criminals because of the expectation of criminality.   More White citizens are using and buying drugs than Black citizens, yet more Black citizens are jailed, for the same crimes.  Simply put, a fatherless White boy has a better chance to succeed in America than a fatherless Black boy, as the children are treated and or mistreated differently by the system  (parents, schools, religion, government).  Power is the name of the game.

Carol J-J

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Brian D'Agostino

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Jul 7, 2020, 5:16:23 PM7/7/20
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Carol,

I think the upshot of what David said is that public assistance policies are not deliberately intended to destroy the Black family.  Instead, I think it is a lot cheaper to pay families cash stipends than it is to establish public works programs at living wages.  In fact, nothing would build up families--of every race and ethnicity--more than having productive jobs at living wages.  The failure of the private sector to generate such jobs for every person who needs them, and the unwillingness of the rich to pay the taxes necessary for a robust program of public works, leaves the poor vulnerable to a litany of social pathologies including crime, substance abuse, and gangs.  These same pathologies afflict poor Whites but rich Whites don't give a damn. 

Eddie said that we shouldn't get deflected from the police brutality issue by talking about class, but I don't see how we can avoid the class issue because race and class are so closely inter-twined.  Here is an example of what I mean.  In the 1930s, when White America was experiencing 25% unemployment, we nearly had a revolution in this country and FDR's New Deal was the result.  The rich fought FDR tooth and nail, but the Zeitgeist was so radical--including an international alternative to capitalism in the Soviet Union--that they lost control of the political process and public works became the order of the day.  African Americans never benefited much from the New Deal because FDR, to get the South on board, allowed the state governments to administer the programs and the Southern state governments excluded Blacks.  Another feature of the New Deal that excluded Blacks was the exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers from unemployment benefits, and agricultural and domestic workers where disproportionately Black.  But it is worth noting that with 25% unemployment in White America, we very nearly had a revolution in this country.

Now compare that with the situation in Black America, where unemployment among Black males has been around 50% for decades--twice the level that created revolutionary conditions in the 1930s--and no comparable movement for government-provided jobs ever occurred until the Bernie Sanders movement.  I think that anyone who cares about families and delivering the poor from the social pathologies that afflict poor neighborhoods needs to consider the importance of providing productive livelihoods at living wages for everyone who needs them.  The main barrier to such policies is that the rich are unwilling to pay the taxes needed to fund such policies, which would actually benefit the entire society.

Brian

bdagostino.com

Patrick McEvoy-Halston

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Jul 8, 2020, 6:51:35 AM7/8/20
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I believe the main barrier to giving Blacks a living wage HAS been the rich; that's part of it, but let's talk about "the rich." The "rich" has been the entire professional class, liberals and republicans--us--who wanted and required a society which split between the rich--the players--and the poor and irrelevant. That's a complex idea, how good people, how liberals, how we, could possibly want such a thing, and it's a good thing there's a discipline called psychohistory that allows us to access the hidden reason behind pathologies, like for example Robert Laing did in his work with schizophrenia. That's one factor. The other factor is that none of this split could have been executed unless those who would be the losers... or many of them, anyway, didn't want to find themselves spared what they had been experiencing in the decade or two before 1980--further growth. Their own family backgrounds were such that they made personal growth feel sinful, and so they wanted and needed the enacting of "neoliberal policies " which would strip them of their gains, and render them visible proof--via their gaping wounds--that they had not been selfish. The way past this comes when a more emotionally healthy generation takes over, and through our current system, which is what was beginning to happen with Obama and would have been furthered by Hillary Clinton and more so with Chelsea, but, rather, populists took over, alt-right, Bernie bros, and other noise. If somehow Biden gets in, and the "radicals" within the democratic party continue their increasing influence, we'll see not only a living wage engaged the way it should be--without targeting other peoples as unAmerican and cancerous while doing so--but more meaningfully explore and be truthful to where we find value in our lives. That is, if you honestly enjoy going to your local hardware store and absolutely appreciate the person who's always there to work with you and intuit your needs, that person has enormous meaning to you, and should have as much right to our society's resources as anyone else (that person should be cognicized as more a Kohutian therapist, perhaps, than what we've been told their occupation is). That is, not just living wage for "servers" or frontline personal. But living wage for those who were always equal, but whom we deliberately refused to recognize--put our wills against it--because we needed a class of people we could use as poison containers for qualities we needed to keep apart from ourselves--our childhood vulnerability, for instance--in order to maintain our equilibrium. 

Black families started disintegrating and became mostly mother-ruled. There is better than this. But this is the fault of no one, and couldn't have been avoided. It was determined by the fact that as time proceeds after a period of huge dumping of young sacrifices into the maw--via Depression, or war--we can no longer tolerate our gains, for they again begin to feel sinful; acquired absent having paid the price. Read 1950's era "Raisons in the Sun" and feel how enormous it was for that family to become "nuclear" and stable, independent. It's the greatest pleasure. And so it was due to be sacrificed. Bringing up the need for male presence in Black families now is simply a way to target BLM as ruled by Blacks and white liberals who deserve to be targeted by those who, quote unquote, actually truly love our country. The improvement in Black male presence in families we require, comes from those who actually mean Blacks well, and that's BLM, even if they can be made to seem antithetical to this development via their position on patriarchy. 

Anyway, my morning thoughts.
Patrick

P.S. The best article I've read on how hard Black families have tended to press themselves if they ever appear spoiled is to be found in an essay by Brittney Cooper. Usually, suppressing their children's independence and making it appear sinful is explained by the Black family's need to not appear uppity; that is, usually it is recognized as common but actually aberrant of how these children would be raised absent this threat to them by white people, who'll hunt them down if they ever dare express themselves truly. The threat of white people is real, but I think this is some of the romanticism we still require.... that we liberals still require, in our world views, that the rightwing and that moderates longing to regress will use to hammer at us these next number of months before the election, for they know they have us pinned--we cannot shake this worldview. We cannot shake it, because if we vary, start considering that Black families are not well, and not only owing to white oppression, but via the means people like Terry Crews are bringing up, we find that the part of us that wants to become racist, to regress, is claiming us, so, heroically, we resist fact after fact after fact, boldly eventually looking ridiculous to all others and finding ourselves erased from the national conversation. But remembered, and in a form to be rightly recalled. The problem is that like Brian, many of us grew up in environments that were not sufficiently progressive... that is, many of us grew up in families where our parents were insufficiently loved themselves that they required us to serve them and made our own independence feel tinged with a sense of sin. Hence, there is some part of us that longs to claim us into a way of thinking that'll get rid of everything we value about ourselves, but will provide us the relief of the balm of our parents no longer viewing us with suspicious eyes.  Link to Brittney Cooper's essay.  

dlo...@nycap.rr.com

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Jul 12, 2020, 9:53:22 PM7/12/20
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Dear Alice and group,

 

                I wanted to say something about the issue of dialoguing across “political divides”.  It certainly seems like a good idea – why would anyone object? The problem, for me, is who I’m engaging with on the other side of the political divide. I don’t have any problem with understanding the anger and frustration of many Trump voters who feel they have been badly treated by the government’s economic policies, I am also able to see that many Trump voters have very different values and attitudes than I have, even some I consider abhorrent, and I would be more than willing to engage in dialogue with them.  But, there are certain actions taken by others which cross a line, and consequently, preclude dialogue.

 

                I, and I suspect a good many others, think it would be both morally unacceptable as well as tactically stupid to engage on any level, other than to punish, with individuals who have harmed others without cause and continue to justify such acts and indicate willingness to do more of the same.

 

                To be specific, those Trump voters who engage in acts such as physically attacking others out of political motivation, who engage in public acts of racism, who commit hate crimes, and who threaten to kill or hurt those, and their family members, who express views with which they disagree.

 

                I submit that any stance toward such unrepentant individuals, short of outright condemnation, can function to enable such behavior.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                David Lotto  

Alice Maher

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Jul 13, 2020, 1:21:51 AM7/13/20
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David, I understand your point of view, but I fear it represents a kind of pre-judgment that my conservative friends say is typical of liberals and pushes them further into the Trump corner rather than toward Biden, who may be a better person but has a platform that makes them uncomfortable. Many liberals seem to assume that people who are concerned about a huge liberal uprising must be some variant of white supremacists. The conservatives in our group are unique, interesting, thoughtful and nuanced. One is an APsaA member, one a historian at U Chicago, and one is a young attorney who wants to run for office as a non-Trump republican. Two of them are very religious people. I can't see how efforts to ally with them would be hurtful. If they happen to be white supremacists or advocating public hate crimes, which I sincerely doubt, that would emerge in bold relief with appropriate reactions.

I hope some of you will be interested in checking it out. After you watch the dialogue, you can talk with the panel for 2 weeks on Facebook and then hear them speak about whether any elements of their perspectives may have shifted, and what brought that shift about. changingourconsciousness.org/events.php

Alice

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Brian D'Agostino

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Apr 27, 2021, 10:53:24 AM4/27/21
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As he generally does, CNN's Stephen Collinson has provided a succinct, informative and astute evaluation of the overall political situation in the United States at present, weaving together recent developments that are often discussed elsewhere without adequate context: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/27/politics/republican-circus-donald-trump/index.html

Brian D'Agostino

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Apr 29, 2021, 1:23:29 PM4/29/21
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Dear all,

Tomorrow may be the last day to register for the above referenced webinar; the flyer is attached.  I will be giving a talk on May 15 entitled, "Globalization and Death Anxiety: A Psychohistorical Perspective;" my abstract appears below.  I believe that my session and all the others will be posted on YouTube after the webinar, but to participate in the discussion periods, I think you will need to register no later than tomorrow.

Warm regards,

Brian

bdagostino.com

ABSTRACT: This paper summarizes empirical findings from “Terror Management” research and applies them to the era of globalization culminating in the COVID-19 Pandemic.  Terror Management Theory (Solomon et al, 2015) applies the methods of experimental psychology to investigate the causes and effects of death anxiety.  These studies examine the function of belief systems and group identifications in the management of death anxiety.  This paper examines these processes in the historical context of globalization and the COVID-19 Pandemic, and concludes with a brief overview of clinical and social implications.

Reference: Solomon, S., Greenberg, J. and Pyszczynski, T. (2015). The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. New York: Random House.


May 14-16 webinar.pdf

Brigitte DEMEURE

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Apr 30, 2021, 4:49:03 AM4/30/21
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That's great !

I hope it is possible to see it all on Youtube sometime !

Best

Brigitte

envoyé : 29 avril 2021 à 19:23
de : Brian D'Agostino <bdagost...@gmail.com>
à : clios...@googlegroups.com
objet : [cliospsyche] TIME SENSITIVE--Three day International Webinar on "Redefining Wellbeing in The Wake of Pandemic"- organised by Department of Psychology, University of Calcutta, India.


 

 

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Michael Britton

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Apr 30, 2021, 6:40:19 AM4/30/21
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Brian,
Thanks so much.  I will see it afterwards and I look forward to hearing you in particular.  They say there will be gale winds up to 60mph today and tomorrow.  They often get that wrong, but stay safe just in case!
Michael

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